1801. 🇬🇧 Will The Archers Finally Make It On To A Royal Mail Stamp?

 🇬🇧 In Britain, the general public could not give a fig for what subjects are featured on Royal Mail stamps in these present times. They tend not to use stamps or even write letters and so why should anyone really worry about what appears on a postage stamp which they probably will not be able to buy at their local small post office anyway? I did not have a single special Christmas stamp used on any of the Christmas cards popping through my letterbox this year and I certainly have not seen any of the multitude of other stamps released by Royal Mail on an ordinary item of mail received at my home in the past two or even three years. ‘Commemorative’ stamps, let’s be realistic, are redundant apart from being a means for Royal Mail, like other postal organisations, to make a little bit of extra money on the side. They may also be useful as a bit of national propaganda from time to time but as patriotism and love of country are out of fashion in Britain, stamps which might have that role are generally not issued for fear of offending some group or another.

But every year though, collectors still get excited, but decreasingly so I believe, about speculating what stamps are going to be released by Royal Mail in the coming new year.

A couple of thoughts (well three actually):-

1. Prince Phillip, The Duke of Edinburgh, will celebrate his 100th birthday on 26 June. 

2. As mentioned in a previous Blog, 2021 sees the Centenary of a Briton, Professor John Macleod, sharing the Nobel Prize for Medicine with the Canadian Frederick Banting for his role in discovery of an insulin preparation which would save the lives of millions of people with diabetes.

3. The Archers, the world’s longest-running radio soap opera, set in the fictional English Midlands village of Ambridge, arrives at its 70th anniversary of regular broadcasting by the BBC. An issue to commemorate the anniversary has all the advantages of the programme remaining very popular among the middle classes and the elderly, who might buy any such stamps, as well as reflecting nostalgia (which Royal Mail sees as a great attraction to potential stamp buyers) for an English rural idyll of rolling countryside, simple countryside pursuits (cake baking, cricket on the village green, summer fetes, bee keeping, horse riding and so on) and decent gentle folk (with the working classes being comic and all either hardworking salt-of-the earth types (especially the women) or rogues in a mild, harmless sort of way (the males in the main part). It also has the advantage of never having been celebrated philatelically by Royal Mail before. And it does have a catchy memorable theme tune, once heard forever hummed.

🇸🇬 Singapore Post will issue a new machine-dispensed stamp on 8 January 2021 to commemorate the Lunar new year which will be the The Year of the Ox. The design reproduces one of the designs of the Year of the Ox stamps (but reversed) which are due to be release on the same day. Rating:- ***.

🇳🇦 NamPost, the postal service of Namibia, plans to issue 3 sets of new stamps during 2021, all depicting different aspects of local natural history:-

16 March 2021 - Snipes (birds) - 3 stamps

14 July 2021 - Wild flowers - 3 stamps

12 October - Mustelids (weasel-like mammals) - 3 stamps.

🇲🇾 Pos Malaysia will issue a sheetlet of 10 different Se Temku (personalised greetings) stamps showing Christmas decorations on 23 December 2020 (a little too close to Christmas Day to be of any practical use on Christmas mail, I would have thought). The issue is sold only in a pack which additionally contains 3 postcards and 3 envelopes for RM25 (£4.58p).

943. Baby Seals Steal The Show On Latest Tristan Da Cunha Issue.

  🇸🇭 Penguins and baby seals - the territories which are clients of Creative Direction/Pobjoy Stamps have just about the most appealing subjects to be featured on postage stamps that any stamp designer could wish for. The only subjects missing are Labrador puppies. 

  Creative Direction makes great use of these wonderful subjects time and time again by presenting collectors with some splendid, perfectly chosen photographs placed absolutely ideally on the stamp designs it produces and giving great delight at a reasonable price to collectors worldwide who buy them.

  The latest wonderful such set will be issued by the Tristan Da Cunha postal service on 12 April 2017 on the subject of Subantarctic fur seals. Who can resist adding them to their collection? The stamps were designed by Bee Design using photographs by Mia Wege and lithographed by Lowe-Martin Group and perforated 13. Rating:- ****** (six stars!).

  Thanks to Juliet Warner for information about this and other issues.

  Perhaps Creative Direction could find an excuse to issue a set featuring labrador puppies for one of its lucky client territories. Perhaps there's a Port Stanley dog show or duck hunting in South Georgia. Just imagine how appealing a set of 6 stamps featuring Labrador puppies could be!

  🇬🇧 Royal Mail's latest Post and Go issues include two new stamps from IAR kiosk A009 situated in the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust gift shop in Stratford upon Avon in the form of the "Union Jack" and "Machin Head" labels with additional inscriptions applied. The original announcement for this issue which was released on 20 March 2017 stated that overprint would commemorate "Schools week" but the inscription actually reads "Shakespeare Week" in irregular thick capital letters. The "Machin Head" stamps have code MA13.

  This inscription will be applied until 21 April 2017 when, I presume, it will be replaced by a new inscription to coincide with Shakespeare's 453rd birthday on 23 April.

  The A005 kiosk was installed at East Anglian Railway Museum on 20 March 2017 and is dispensing 2 types of labels - the "Travelling Post Office, 1890s" and Machin Head" - with the additional inscription "EARM".

  Yet another British museum has been adding to the growing list of "Post and Go" issues released under the auspices of Royal Mail so far in 2017. The STEAM GW Museum kiosk A010 has been kept busy by dispensing "Mail By Rail" labels - all 6 designs - with the museum logo inscribed on them as well as strips of the "Travelling Post Office, 1890s" design also with the museum logo inscribed on them. These were sold from 20 February.

  The "STEAM GWR" logo "Travelling Post Office, 1890s" logo was then dispensed from 15 March 2017 with the additional inscription "King George V 90th" applied to it. The"Machin Head" label with code MA13 was also dispensed from the same date with the "STEAM GWR" logo and King George V 90th inscription applied to it.

  🇸🇬 Singapore Post issued its machine vended stamp series in a new design on 20 March 2017. The subject of the issue is the "Singapore Skyline" and the view depicted on the stamp is certainly spectacular. This issue replaces the design which was introduced on 14 August 2015 to commemorate Singapore's Golden Jubilee anniversary, also depicted below:-